Journals Day 6

I woke up this morning and decided to work on yesterday's journal since I fell asleep really early. This is the second time I woke up today. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of pouring rain and thought about how it rains so little in Arizona comparatively. Since I showered last night, I got dressed and went to breakfast. I noticed that the sound of rain could still be heard and looking out the window at the breakfast table, I watched the rain play symphonies as it trickled from the sky to the ground. In a country where it rains everyday in the summer, I have been lucky up until now.

After breaking my fast with cheese and fruit, I re-packed my bag because we are only a guest for one night at 'The Guest House' :-) . We had to strip the beds covers and place our towels, robes, and bed covers in separate bags. I took pictures and proceeded to the bus with my day pack and backpack because our suit cases were in Gifu. I slipped my trusty shoes on and jumped outside and onto the bus.

The bus drive was long. 4 hours long, but we would end up at the World Expo in Gifu, Japan. We broke up into groups and spread out over the entire Expo. The place was HUGE, even by American standards. The amount of cultures from all over the world was amazing! All the cool things had lines so we had to go to other places. First, we checked out an area called the interactive fun zone and found it to be a 'kiddy land'. Not that there is anything wrong with that. We checked out the kid toys and then we went to lunch. After lunch, we headed toward the more 'grown-up' section where we had to wait in line to have our faces digitized and put into a movie. The movie was cool but I couldn't understand it because it was entirely in Japanese. The ideas expressed helped me to understand and in the end, the overall meaning hit home even with a language barrier. As we left the movie, someone in my group checked their watch. We had 10 minutes to get to the other side of the park!! To make matters worse, the distance we needed to travel in those 10 minutes was probably 1.5 miles as the crow flies!!!! We took off in a full sprint as we rushed to not be late. As the goal was in sight, a friend spoke of a bathroom emergency and how she couldn't wait. So another friend, our patty friend and I went to settle her business as the rest went to explain for us. After the business was taken care of, we walked to our group and found that because they got there in time and were able to explain our situation, we were given more time so we weren't late.

After we all got to the bus, everyone in our group started laughing about how we ran all that way through the park and made it on time. I laughed even harder when I found out that even one had time to flirt with a few guys as she rushed toward the exit. We got our room assignments on arrival and grabbed our suitcases from the truck to haul them to our rooms. After we got them to our rooms, we were met with the challenge of fixing up our beds. They were the same layout as the ones in The Guest House so we used our collective memories to figure out which futon to sleep on and what sheets to use. We had to then meet downstairs as we were going to watch fisherman fish in an old Japanese method of using birds to catch fish.

The Fisherman were very interesting. They tied ends onto the necks of the birds just tight enough to stop them from swallowing the fish but not to tight to stop their breathing. The birds are then sent out and while the fisherman use a fire hanging over the boat for light and bait for the fish, the birds dive down, grab a fish, and hop into the boat where the fisherman takes the fish and sends the bird back. The bird is not hurt at all and the method works incredibly well still today. We stayed for about 15 minutes and returned to the hotel for showers and sleep.

The farther from Tokyo we get, the more native Japanese culture I run into. Japanese culture is amazing. At the Expo, every country participating had its own area but Japanese culture was visible in everything from architecture to the language. The Expo was cool but watching interacted while there made it all the nicer. Being here is a treat, I know that, but a nicer ‘treat’ is the fact that we are able to live a life in which we can live as everyone in Japan lives theirs everyday. I only wish that this trip could be longer.